Thursday, June 16, 2022

Implications Of Rights

 

Though I have written on this topic priorly, I feel that given the gross ignorance of the general public on a concept so centrally important to our liberty, repetition is in order.

Years ago I expounded, however modestly, on the qualities and characteristics of "Rights", where we discovered the definition of the term, as well as the fact that there exist two basic categories: inherent and synthetic (or contractual).  If you feel your understanding of the term may not be quite up to snuff, I would suggest reading at the link, above.

All rights carry implications.  There are no exceptions, for it is in the very fabric of a right from which its concomitant implications arise.  If there is no other implication arising from any given right, there is always that of the right of exercise.  If you hold a right, you then by direct implication also hold title to exercise that right.  Were it otherwise, the right in question would not be a right, but rather a privilege.  Rights and privileges do not even live on the same planet.  Mr. Apples, meet Mr. Oranges.  This truth is inherent to the very structure of a right.  Anyone who claims to the contrary, speaks pure nonsense.  Imagine, if you will, opening a door to find a man over a struggling body as he stabs it in repeatedly vicious fashion with a long knife, blood spurting everywhere while turning to you and with a straight face proclaiming that he is not stabbing a struggling body.  That is the brand of absurdity of which we speak when someone asserts that while you may hold a right, you do not hold the authority to exercise it, much less the means of doing so.

One of the iconic examples of this is the old "you can't shout 'fire!' in a crowded theater.  I hate to break it to you, but you can, and you may, no matter what any statute to the contrary might say.  This is not to suggest that one ought go out and test my assertion, because we already know that the police will come and take you away in bracelets, most likely, if you do.  But there is an important distinction to be made here with regard to the manner of exericse.  

If someone waltzes into a theater, unceremoniously begins shouting "FIRE!!!!" and the crowd panics, stampedes, and people and property are damaged, then the utterer of those words is indeed guilty of a tort at the very least, if not a crime, in that the exercise of his right resulted in such damage.  Such an act with such a result could be said to have been an incorrect exercise of his inherent right, much the same as my right to keep and bear arms would be exercised incorrectly, were I to enter a bank, draw a pistol, and try to commit a robbery.

But if prior to the show I were to get the attention of the audience, beg their indulgence to yell "FIRE!!!!", get it, and then do so, resulting in no damage done, the "authorities" would have no valid basis for molesting me in response to my actions.  The theater manager, however, might be within his authority to ask me to leave the premises.  After all, if during a play one of the cast has a line wherein he repeatedly shouts "FIRE!!!!", are the police to be summoned, with said cast member to be dragged off to the hoosegow in manacles and cuffs?  Once again, context is king.

And so we see a problem with the prohibitionists: not only do they often fail to understand the differences between proper and improper exercise - at least in any explicit fashion - but they also are of the habit to advocate for prohibition on the deeply tacit assumption that all exercise is wrong or even criminal in certain cases.  This is as absurd as claiming that all injections with syringes are wrong, just because once every three generations or so, some murderous lunatic kidnaps someone and kills them using a syringe and some poisoning agent.  Nobody makes such claims because they understand the difference between proper and improper use.  Similarly, when some maniac uses his automobile to mow down dozens of pedestrians, nobody calls for a ban on all such vehicles.  And yet, there are those who refuse to acknowledge this quality of reality along certain lines.  

Firearms are the quintessential example of this.

The anti-Second Amendment people largely dismiss the right to self-defense.  They deny this, yet their self-contradictory beliefs, as publicly professed, clearly indicates otherwise.  One can see endless examples of this in the news media where the bereaved mother tearily proclaims to the camera that her baby didn't need to be shot.  Tell that to the defender who was facing a nearly seven-foot tall, 300 pounder, coming at him with a machete in his hand and murder in his eyes.  To those mothers, there is no evil to which their children might have applied themselves that would have justified a defender opening fire.  This, of course, is pure insanity, but that makes no end of the practice of some people proclaiming that self-defense with a gun is not a valid response to clear and present threats to life and limb.

Do also note the back-channel implication of the assertion that a man holds no authority to exercise his right to self-defense: you as a living, breathing human being are obliged to hand your life over to anyone who demands it.  Some will rebut with, "I'm not saying that at all.  You can always call the police and shout for help."  Excuse me while I stuff my eyeballs, which have just rolled out of their sockets, back in.  The rank absurdity of such arguments defies words.

At the very least, you are obliged by implication to assume the risk of your own life at the hands of one who is apparently attempting to do you great harm, for the sake of not bringing them to harm.  This fails to so much as rise to stupidity.  No decent human being wishes to bring others to harm, but equally valid is the desire to avoid being harmed.  No man is obliged to risk his life for another.  That so many do so is a credit to the generosity of men, but under no circumstance are they so obliged.  Therefore, then one man threatens another, the threatened party stands centrally within his rights to take whatever defensive actions he may deem necessary to the preservation of his existence and his health, such as it may be.

If I hold title to my First Property, which is to say my life, then I may be said to hold the Right to my life, those terms being semantically interchangeable.  The first implication of this is that my life is my own, and nobody else's.  If that be the case, then it directly follows that nobody holds the least right to take my life from me in any manner or measure without my consent, all else equal.  Some would go so far as to proclaim that even I hold no authority to surrender my life to another, much less that they may take it without permission.  It has been long said that God enjoins all creatures to preserve themselves from harm and death.  Whatever the ultimate cause, it is clear that all living things struggle to remain alive because it is better than being dead.

If I hold title to my life and nobody else may rightfully take it from me, whether through murder, maiming, or by casting me into involuntary servitude, then it further follows perforce that I hold every authority to defend my First Property from any and all such threats.  If this be the case, then I hold the right to exercise the right of self-defense when I am threatened with violation of my First Property Rights, and if I am entitled to exercise that right, I am perforce entitled to obtain the means of exercise.  Such means may include empty-hand martial arts training; it may include the acquisition of various weapons such as knives, swords, firearms, sticks, billies, staffs, stones, explosives, automobiles, etc.  It would include the right for me to build a fortress-like dwelling, to furnish it with the accoutrements of defense, and that of making their use when a threat surfaces.

Several years ago a truck driver threatened to kill me with a pistol he had brandished at me on I-64 just outside of Lewisburg, West Virginia.  The moment his hand touched the hood of my car, I stomped the throttle and ran him over.  He was caught in Virginia and taken to jail.  I was cleared of any wrongdoing because I'd properly exercised my natural right to defend my life from the threat of extinguishment at the hands of one with no valid authority to do so.

So what about self-defense vis-รก-vis an attacker's right to his First Property?  This is, after all, the very argument of the grieving mothers for the lost lives of their angelic, gang-banging issue.  The answer is simple: the moment you initiate an unjust action against another human being, you have effectively repudiated your claim to life.  By unjustly threatening the welfare of another, you have placed yourself at their mercy precisely because they are in no way obliged to grant you license to bring them to harm, whether great or small.  They are, therefore, fully authorized by Nature itself to take whatever actions they may deem necessary to preserve their existences.  

This isn't rocket surgery.  And yet, there are those who attempt to obfuscate the clarity of these truths with all manner of obliquely architected language that is rotten and impacted with all manner of tacit implications which have served them well in ensnaring the unwary who fall for one of the most commonly used fallacies: the appeal to emotion.

But do not allow yourself to be fooled.  LEARN what your rights are and what they imply.  If you gain that knowledge and hold it well, nobody will be able to rob you of your sovereign authority as a living and free individual.

The basics may be summarized with a list:

  1. A right implies a concomitant right of exercise
  2. A right to exercise implies the attendant right to validly obtain the means of exercise
  3. A right must be exercised properly, lest a crime or tort be committed
  4. An act of violation of another's rights may place your own claims in jeopardy
  5. Want your rights respected?  Then respect those of others.  Don't be a hypocrite
The basic principles of proper human relations are simplicity itself, and yet we humans appear to find them ever so difficult to put into practice.  This is most especially true of the political class, that cancerous vestige of the Age of Kings, the members of which far too often believe themselves entitled and rightfully empowered to circumscribe and even deny the natural prerogatives of free men.  These upstarts have wreaked endless havoc and misery on the lives of those to whom they swore oaths of good faith and competent service, thereby revealing themselves, prima facie, as the scurrilous bounders and felons that they are in glaring  word, deed, and consequent fact.  

Never allow anyone to cow you into believing that your inherent rights are somehow conditional, or into surrendering them to others.  They are absolute and should never be allowed to yield to the aggressions of those who would strip you buck-naked of everything you should be holding most dearly in your life.  

Resist.

Refuse.

Rebel.

Mors omnibus tyrannis, vel magnis, vel minimis.

Until next time, God bless America, humanity's last hope, and please accept my best wishes.